Capitol Hill Blue Forums Misc. Topics General Stuff Watching the Supreme Court

How strange, I always thought it was Gingrich. Guess I was wrong. Do not remember Hasturt but then, its a miracle that I still remember my own name. I asked my girl at the VA if there was a memory pill yet and she said there was not. There are, however (she said) some that may help. She said the problem with them is that there may be connected problems and then she not only told me the list of those that are out there but what else might happen if you take one of them. Both lists were very long. You do not want to try any of them!

Here in my opinion was the beginning – “The Hastert rule, also known as the "majority of the majority" rule, is an informal governing principle used in the United States by Republican Speakers of the House of Representatives since the mid-1990s to maintain their speakerships[1] and limit the power of the minority party to bring bills up for a vote on the floor of the House.[2] Under the doctrine, the speaker will not allow a floor vote on a bill unless a majority of the majority party supports the bill.[3]

Under House rules, the speaker schedules floor votes on pending legislation. The Hastert rule says that the speaker will not schedule a floor vote on any bill that does not have majority support within their party—even if the majority of the members of the House would vote to pass it. The rule keeps the minority party from passing bills with the assistance of a minority of majority party members. In the House, 218 votes are needed to pass a bill; if 200 Democrats are the minority and 235 Republicans are the majority, the Hastert rule would not allow 200 Democrats and 100 Republicans together to pass a bill, because 100 Republican votes is short of a majority of the majority party, so the speaker would not allow a vote to take place.[4]

The Hastert rule is an informal rule and the speaker is not bound by it; they may break it at their discretion. Speakers have at times broken the Hastert rule and allowed votes to be scheduled on legislation that lacked majority support within the Speaker's own party. Dennis Hastert alleged the rule was "kind of a misnomer" in that it "never really existed" as a rule.”

Gingrich does get blamed for a lot of stuff Hastert did. But certainly, Gingrich was by no means a saint. Gingrich was one of those politicians democrats love to hate. There was plenty of good reasons for that. Perhaps the biggest reason was the “Contract with American,” Gingrich came up with that ended 40 straight years of house rule by the democrats. The republicans gained 54 seats in the 1994 midterms. Gingrich while speaker also push for Bill Clinton’s impeachment over Monica Lewinski. It was, however, Hastert who went through with the impeachment of Bill Clinton after he took over as speaker.

I can remember when the two parties actually created legislation to deal with the southern border. BOTH sides had to sit down and create this bill. As far as I can tell this was the first time, in a long time, that both parties had actually sit down and work something like this to fruition. Then cam Trump and told them to not pass it on as he needed to be able to attack the Dems for not taking care of the southern border. The house Republicans duly shut the whole thing down. The newsies cleverly showed the Republican house member who did the legislation and he was a bit upset about it all but the Republicans duly did their job as per Trump's desires. I remember, at the time, that I thought that, perhaps, both parties had displayed a capacity to actually do their job. I was wrong, Trump fixed that one.

Since then I have continued to watch the news and I don't think I heard anything about the above more than 2 times and one never hears about it anymore. Biden - nope, never mentions it. Same things with all the newsies - not a word. Trump gets to nail Biden and nobody mentions the fact of what Trump did. Since I do not spend all day, every day, listening I may be wrong but, basically, Trump has is way blaming Biden for the southern border all the time and nobody calls Trump on what he did.

Just thought I would mention that one as, now, amongst other things, Trump is getting a free ride. Oh, and the Republicans are regularly calling Trump an ex President of the United states which was one of the greatest presidents of all time. When he left office, incidentally, he was given the title of worst president in the history of the country. That too seems to be forgotten now.

Interesting times?

Jgw, most Americans have very short memories. For an event to have an impact on an election, it must happen within 2-3 months of the election date. Many Americans are looking back on the Trump presidency thinking they were better off under Trump than Biden. They’ve forgotten the reasons they voted against Trump in 2020.

Yep and short memories is just the start. This is particularly true of the voting public. I have, pretty much, whined enough on that stuff. After you told me about your adventures in buying surplus stuff I thought I would take a look. What I found were, literally, hundreds (if not thousands), of places to buy surplus. The entire surplus thing is also interesting. States, for instance, have stores to buy their surplus as does the fed as well. This is also true of universities. Dawns on me, its actually an industry! Amazing!

There seems to be not only government but entire companies dedicated to the sale of surplus. Pretty amazing but I gave up. I spend quite a bit of time spending very little buying stuff I don't need because I have a lot of time on my hands these days. When I buy on the net I usually just goto ebay as they, pretty much, sell everything. Much of what I buy on ebay comes from amazon. That one has always amused me. I have a friend who sells a lot on ebay and he explained why that is but I never figured it out.

I was originally talking about specific VA policies brought in BY Newt Gingrich.
Back when we lived in Dallas and used the Dallas VA there was a Paralyzed Veterans of America national service officer named Jackie Richardson who was a high functioning quad stuck in a power chair who used to travel to Washington every single year to testify before Congress and it was Mr. Richardson who returned one day and showed us on PAPER how the discretionary versus non-discretionary model was flipped on its head BY Mr. Gingrich.
Karen and I read it with our own eyes.
Now I wish I'd run off a few Xeroxes of the pages and digitized them into a machine readable file to show you.

Too soon old, too late smart for me I guess. I should have copied the pages.
Anyway, that's what Jackie was hopping mad about because the year it happened, we ended up with nurses holding bake sales and soliciting donations because they were running out of bandages, ordinary supplies like urine sample cups, gauze pads and, oddly enough, rubber CRUTCH tips.

But the Dallas VA never stopped being remodeled all that time and, like most other VA's still IS being remodeled.
No shortage of money for remodeling!
It's a JOBS program for construction contractors, leave a beautiful shell behind when Trump fires all the disloyal doctors and nurses.

This is a bug-a-boo of mine. The branches are not "co-equal", they are coordinate. I know people don't like to make that distinction, but if one wants to be an "originalist", that distinction is important. Coequal indicates "of the same level", whereas coordinate means "with separate responsibilities". The term co-equal was the mantra Franklin Roosevelt made popular, because he wanted to expand the scope of the Executive branch, so he wanted to be on par with Congress.

The framers, however, envisioned Congress as the preeminent branch - the one that makes the laws - and representing the people, themselves. The Executive executes the laws - passed by Congress; the Judiciary interprets the laws - passed by Congress. That is why all of those "government authorities" given to the federal government are under the auspices of Congress in Article I. Therefore, all of the powers of the Presidency and Judiciary are inferior to Congress' - which is why Congress is given authority to circumscribe the authority of the courts - including the Supreme Court - "under such Regulations as the Congress shall make."; and to "advise and consent" to appointments and Treaties.

Because of that, Congress does have the authority to set forth rules of behavior for both the Executive and Judiciary. They just haven't. But they can. The Supreme Court is actually aware of this, which is why they want to keep ethics considerations at home. But they know they are governed by the same law the rest of us are - "The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour" - and they know, for example, that they have to report income sources - and if they don't, that is an impeachable offense. Similarly, they can be bound by an ethics rule set down by Congress, in law. And if they don't comply, can be impeached. They don't want it to come to that. Alito and Thomas are making it necessary.

This makes perfect sense to me.I buy it lock, stock and barrel